HM build issues?


 

John Case

TVWBB Member
I built the heatermeter yesterday.
wrote the image to the card and nothing. Did some searching and found out that the PNY card I had purchased was not compatible. Went and returned it and got a sandisk that was.
Wrote the image and all was golden!

Connected at the default address 192.168.200.1 and went in and changed the ip address to 192.168.2.100, all was good again running on wired ethernet.
I was following this thread http://tvwbb.com/showthread.php?38671-HOWTO-Configuring-LinkMeter-WiFi&highlight=configuration and
I changed something in the network settings and I cannot get connected to the HM.

So far I've:
reset config with button
burned image to sd card
formatted and burned image to sd card again, (when I formatted it showed 8gb available on a 16gb card, I assume there is a hidden partition that I can't get to??

How do I blow away all the changes I've made so I can get back to my first boot up with 192.168.200.1?
I don't have a usb keyboard to connect and edit directly.

Thanks,
John
 
Did you reflash the image from scratch with Win32DiskImager, then add the norestore option? i.e. you can't add norestore to a system which has already been booted once. Don't forget you'll need to connect to 192.168.200.1 after that.

As for your original problem, is your normal network 192.168.2.x? If so, re-read the IMPORTANT part at the bottom of the post you linked.
 
Still not able to get HM up. I had it up yesterday. I reset probe for vishay 10k for ambient and all was golden. Then as I stated above I made network changes.

I found a blurb on the internet about formatting the card in my nikon camera to completely reformat it. So I did, the size was restored to 16gb. I then reformatted it using SDFormatter.

Ran Win32DiskImager and put the original image (openwrt-brcm2708-sdcard-vfat-ext4.img) I had working yesterday back on the sd card.
edited cmdline.txt and added norestore to the end
Booted up HM with HDMI screen attached. I still cannot connect to it. I set my ip as I did yesterday to 192.168.200.2 on my computer. Try to get to it at 192.168.200.1, still no joy

On the hdmi monitor I see it loading the ethernet stuff, but it does not display its IP address to me.

My normal network is 192.168.1.x
 
Last edited:
I believe you need to change your computer's wired network adapter to 192.168.200.x (where x is any number between 2 and 254). Plug your computer into the pi via ethernet. Then, browse to 192.168.200.1. That should bring up the Link Meter page.

I just set mine up this weekend. That's one of the things that tripped me up, too. I eventually found some documentation for it that Bryan created and posted here. But, I can't find it now to give you the link. But, if you set your computer up like that, I think it will work for you.
 
So when you booted up with the HDMI connected, it just booted once? If it only boots once, then it did not restore your configuration (the config_restore script reboots at the end so you'd see 2 total boots after a new flash). It should have IP address 192.168.200.1 at this point. Maybe the web server is crashing for some reason, so you can try telnetting to it with putty and seeing if you get in.
 
Should the ip addres show on the console screen? I don't see it

It looks like it booted 2 times

I'm wondering if I should get another SD card and load it up fresh therefore there is not a config to restore?
 
No the IP address doesn't show on the console at all. Strange that the norestore option doesn't work.

Supposedly you can just wipe the SD card entirely using the SD Formatter that will remove the configuration backup.
 
Thanks for everybody's help!!!
I ran out and bought a new card, imaged it, put it in the HM4 and it came right up.

What I don't understand is; how the hell did the partition stay in place after formatting it many times, even getting the usable space to show 16gb in windows, which it did not show previously before the reformatting.
I formatted with SDFormatter setting to recover space, my nikon camera as suggested on the www as another person was having similar issues with an Rpi
As I mentioned earlier I even put norestore in

How can I completely wipe the card to re-image it correctly?
 
Strange. Setting FORMAT SIZE ADJUSTMENT to on has always removed all of the partitions and thus the config file for me. This drove me crazy until I found SD Formatter.
 
What I don't understand is; how the hell did the partition stay in place after formatting it many times, even getting the usable space to show 16gb in windows, which it did not show previously before the reformatting.
Magic! Because a format doesn't usually go through and blank all the blocks, it would take a really long time. So it just initializes the allocation tables and sometimes some "superblocks" across the device. If one of those superblocks doesn't overwrite the tiny bit of data that stores the config, I find it again when you re-image and think you want to restore it.

Sometimes windows won't even reformat at all, it will just reformat the first partition, which is nothing in terms of size. I think the SD card formatter app is the only way to really clean it out. I've really got to figure out a better way to test the norestore option because it worked for me every time and clearly it does not work very well.
 

 

Back
Top